5 Minutes of Passage

Released in 2007, Passage is a 100 x 16 megapixel videogame that focuses on life, mortality, and the costs and benefits of marriage.  Beginning the game as a young man, the gamer is placed into a virtual maze with a wall directly above the character, and movement possible towards their immediate right and downward.  Early on in the game, the young man can  “bump” into a woman who eventually becomes his life partner and companion.  Traveling together, the couple experiences life as a change in the 8 pixel graphics.  Discovering treasures earn the gamer points, but some are placed in such a way that having the women with you makes them inaccessible, representing the certain struggles in life.  Both characters age together, explore together, and eventually the women grows old and passes away, leaving the man alone.  Shortly after, the man too perishes and the game is rendered over.  The 5-minute videogame gives insight into the obstacles experienced during life and the way in which we progress through our lifetime.  The narrative potentials of this videogame fit Jenkin’s ideas on Narrative Architecture perfectly, in relation to certain videogames and their want or need to tell a specific story.  Passage puts the idea of life, and how short it really is into perspective, giving the gamer a sense of becoming the man in the videogame and experiencing the heart wrenching loss of a significant other and the toll it takes on the rest of their life.